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Nathan Barnard's avatar

I think this is a great post. I have quibble on the Iraq war example - I think it's highly relevant that Saddam had invaded both Kuwait and Iran unprovoked previously and had had and had used chemical weapons. I don't think this changes anything substantively in your argument, but I think it underplays the degree to which Saddam was a danger to international community.

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Jerden's avatar

After reading both posts, I think I agree more with you - we probably should consider more things as issues of justice, not fewer. I do still think it's pretty arbitrary how we chose to frame things - in a society with slightly different values (or even with the same values?) we could well be talking about social issues in terms of "Duty" or "Virtue" with much the same results, so I think it's just a matter of what we find most compelling. It may actually be worth considering whether different frames work better in different contexts or cultures? (e.g. Liberal vs Conservative, Eastern vs Western)

I do feel like there are issues with framing things in terms of justice though - it may constrain the scope of the problem too much, and encourage disengagement if you're just a regular person - after all, we leave justice to the justice system! As Scott observes, many people have a purely punitive conception of justice, so maybe environmental justice just looks like doing nothing until it's too late and then punishing a small number of people for our collective guilt, which is probably not going to help much. This is probably an issue with how we conceptualise justice more than anything else, but it is still worth considering.

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